It is pretty easy to find some quality legal content online using Google. That’s because your local competitors and others in your niche already have blogs on their websites, publishing quality information, industry news, and marketing collateral to attract and engage their audiences.
If you are to solidify the digital presence of your law firm, it’s time to set up and populate your own blog with quality content that gets attention from visitors and search engines alike.
But, how can you do that?
Here are some tips for legal bloggers to build their audience and create impactful posts:
1. Understand Who You Are Writing For
How old are your website visitors? Do they come looking for a particular type of legal service? Are they in search of legal information or representation or both?
Answer these and other similar questions to thoroughly understand your clientele and then write blogs that offer solutions to their problems.
The resulting data can be used to build client personas that can inform a range of law firm marketing strategies. For example, if you provide corporate law services, your average client could be a man in his early to mid-30s, owns a business, and wants to know how to protect his business from legal complications.
You can find this information through primary research. After that, come up with topics you believe they would be interested in reading and write accordingly.
2. Understand Your Purpose
Each blog post, much like every page on your site, should have a specific purpose. Before you start writing, consider your end goal and work with that in mind.
For example, would you like to inform your readers about a particular legal loophole? Are you hoping to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website by providing information in an easily palatable way?
Narrow down your purpose and let blogging help you achieve the goal.
3. Take Client Recommendations Into Account
A great way to find relevant blog topics is by asking your clients what kind of information they need.
They often come to you for professional advice, making it the perfect opportunity to gauge any learning gaps that might trouble them. Then fill up these gaps by writing detailed blogs for your website and referring your clients to those pages as and when you can.
Take note of the most frequent queries, paying close attention to how they word them. Use this data to create more search-friendly, relevant, and valuable blog posts.
4. Cite Your Sources
Lawyers know the importance of evidence. Thus, when writing blog posts, they should ensure that any claims they make are backed up by solid research and citations. Moreover, a Google ranking factor is whether there are citations and links in your content. (However, they should be relevant, high quality, and not too excessive.)
The longer you take to research the topic, the better it will be to secure your credibility. And again, if your content is deemed credible, it will have better chances of ranking on SERPs.
5. Write About A Specific Niche
The legal field is quite vast. Thus, it is important to only write regarding services your legal firm offers and specializes in. Moreover, write about things you are a subject expert in, such as divorce law, etc.
This is also effective in coming off as a thought leader, loyal, caring, and credible. But, on the other hand, readers will not trust you if they sense that you do not know much about the subject matter at hand.
A reliable way to get over this dilemma is to focus on your locale. Successful legal bloggers ensure that they pay attention to the legal problems troubling the local community. Of course, that may limit your reach; however, those you attract will be more engaged, which should be the ultimate goal of your blog.
6. Focus On Being Helpful
It may seem like a simple tip, but it is often taken for granted by corporate bloggers. Keep in mind that your blog is meant to help those looking for answers online. So ensure that your content can guide them appropriately and give them viable solutions.
7. Keep SEO Tactics In Mind
Even though your ultimate goal is to appease readers when writing blogs, it is vital to give SEO importance too. And it doesn’t have to be complicated; just adding targeted keywords within the content or asking other legal bloggers to link back to your site can be all you need to climb up the rankings.
When writing blogs, try to use specially-tailored and niche keywords to rank in particular for those you are targeting. Moreover, you can use metrics tools such as Google Analytics to track site traffic to see if your Law Firm SEO Strategy is effective.
8. Try To Be Unique
When conducting initial topic research, you will see many blog posts that are easily accessible online, all writing about the same niche as you. Thus, do try to avoid not writing precisely what everyone else is writing about.
It isn’t to say that writing about trending topics isn’t a good strategy, but it is essential to pave your own way and also present a unique viewpoint to your clients, current and prospective. Try not to replicate what others write on their blogs. Instead, come up with unique ways to address those issues, and put your own twist on things to provide real value to your readers.
9. Break Up The Text
When writing a blog post that’s 2000 to 3000 words long, try not to bore the reader. It is essential to avoid writing just a big blog of text with no breaks or visual stimulation. Instead, you need to keep readers engaged by including graphics, bullets, headlines, and images within the content.
Ensure that paragraphs are only a couple of sentences long. Likewise, bullet points should be short. It has become quite common for bloggers to write visually appealing posts that are available in several media formats.
10. Keep It Brief
Lawyers are used to volumes worth of reports. However, blogs do not need to be like that. Even though longer-form blogs are more popular now, several blogs of 2500 words or less perform exceptionally well in this niche.
However, it is common for audiences to have short attention spans, and most only scan through bullet points and headings instead of reading blog posts word for word. Thus, try to create a balance: make it concise but comprehensive. Though this may sound oxymoronic, it essentially means that you should write posts covering each aspect of the topic, but it doesn’t overwhelm readers.
As discussed earlier, try dividing them into short sections and keep each paragraph brief. Moreover, if you can write about a specific topic in 500 words instead of 2,000 or more, it is okay. Likewise, if it takes you more than 3,000 words to convey your message, then that is also fine. Just make sure your point gets across.
11. Review Your Blog Strategies And Goals Frequently
Change is the only constant, as the saying goes. The same goes for blogging as well. The needs of your audience and the audience themselves may change, which means you will have to adapt accordingly. Those who have editorial calendars should review them every quarter and track your blog’s performance every week.
You will be able to see a clear picture of tactics that don’t work, your most popular posts, and what needs to change for better results. This also helps you assess whether your target audience is the same and looking for the same things.
12. Keep Learning
Even if you are a subject expert and have years of expertise in your niche, remember that everyone can learn. It may be from an individual from another industry. Reading, experiencing, learning, and growing are key to becoming a good human and a great blogger.
When you are stimulated through podcasts, programs, discussions with industry leaders, and reading other people’s articles or books is when you can bring about diversity within your content. Moreover, it allows people to know that you are pretty open to learning and trustworthy and may come to you for legal advice due to that.
13. Be Consistent
You probably have more than blogging on your schedule. However, if you are serious about being a renowned legal blogger, you need to ensure you publish blogs consistently. Moreover, even your audiences will be expecting a particular flow of blogs from your site.
It doesn’t mean that you need to post daily or weekly if you don’t want to. However, no matter the schedule you create, you need to ensure you stick to it. Ensure you have enough time to write so you can post on time.
Moreover, commit to your readers accordingly. Make reminders as feasible for you, i.e., by making notes on your phone, noting them down in a calendar, putting an alarm, and asking your assistant to keep you on track. It doesn’t matter how; ensure you get the work done on time.
14. Recycling Old Content
If you are running out of ideas, it’s okay to recycle old blogs. For example, laws change over time, you get a better understanding of some statutes, new rulings come into play, and sometimes there are sudden updates on a very old case.
You can take advantage of these opportunities and write a new blog on the same topic. For example, you could keep the previous post on the blog and make it part two, interlinking to the older one.
Final Thoughts
There are undoubtedly many benefits that law firms and attorneys can get from blogging. However, if you aren’t doing it strategically and no one is reading your posts, you are only wasting time, effort, and resources you could spend on other tasks.
Ensuring you research topics, learn about your audience, and keep the content engaging is critical. Thus, note down these 14 essential tips for creating a blogging plan for your law firm to ensure success.
